Celebrate DS First Birthday in the garden.... what if the weather's not good (ie cold, rainy?)

[Princesitalinda]

Hi everybody, I wonder if you lovely ladies can give me some ideas of what to do to celebrate my DS First Birthday...

This is my DS2, we celebrated DS1's birthdays in South America, where I am originally from, and it always was a big occasion, in a lovely big garden, in summer.

I don't want to let my little DS2 down for his first Birthday. His birthday is on the 31st October, and normally is quite cold and might be rainy, and I wanted to celebrated it in the garden, as its quite big and spaceous...

I thought of a halloween party, we think they will be around 25 children (and the parents)... so quite a lot to be squeezed inside the house... any ideas?? I thought of maybe renting a big tent/marquee, but not sure if there are such big sizes around...

Please help!! any ideas welcome

Wow, that's a lot of people, you are braver than me

A halloween party sounds a fabulous idea; we do this each year with some friends, take turns at each other's houses, and last year our friends put up a big-ish shelter and held it in their garden; I think you'd call it a gazebo more than a marquee, it had open sides. it was lovely to be out as it got dark and was pretty magical by the time we'd all got pumpkins carved and lit with candles......You certainly would need to have some form of shelter though, be it gazebo or whatever.

Lovely idea, go for it! Can I come?

thank you for making it look like a possitive and good idea... We actually married on a 30th October and that year the weather was very nice... but it was mainly luck i guess...

do you have any idea if there are companies hiring out tents gazeebos of that sort? and for that purpose?

Yes, it can be done - DH and I both had our 40th birthday parties in winter and hired a marquee for our garden that came right up to the back of the house. It cost around £250 though, including groundsheet, chairs and hiring a heater from HSS. We used local marquee hire companies (look in Yellow Pages). They came to put the marquee up on the Friday and remove it on the Monday. HTH.

Subsequent to this we decided to buy our own party tent (it has removable sides with windows and doors so can be used as either a marquee or a gazebo) - this may be cheaper if you want to do it every year - have a look here or google for "party tent".